Ice storm was a step back in time ~ January 5, 2005

David Heiller

When it comes to good timing, the ice storm had it down perfectly.

Still, it was a sobering couple of days this past Saturday and Sunday.

The ice started forming on Saturday morning, New Year’s Day. That’s what I mean about perfect timing. Whο goes anywhere on New Year’s Day?

At first it was snow, huge flakes. But that changed to freezing rain by noon. I called Cindy at work at about 3 p.m., and she was ready to head out the door, thanks to some thoughtful co-workers at Casual Corner in La Crosse. She got home by 4 p.m. after a very cautious drive.

Ice built up slowly the rest of the day from sporadic spurts of sleet. It hit harder at about 9:30 p.m. I started to say to Cindy, “This weather is really getting”—then boom, a crack of thunder sounded.

“What did you say?” Cindy shouted from upstairs.

“God just finished the sentence for me,” I replied. Thunder on New Year’s Day? Very strange.

By Sunday morning it was ugly. Half an inch of ice covered everything. Our dog Riley jumped off the porch and fell down.

My daughter Malίka and I took a walk down the road. She was anxious to return to college in St. Peter, Minnesota. But we realized that would not happen soon. Hillside Road was a river of ice, impossible to drive on. We could barely stand up on it. Malika fell down near the crest of the road and slid about 20 feet, the three dogs barking and sliding with her.

Mother nature painted some beautiful scenes
during an ice storm on January 1, 2005

It was pretty, as all ice storms are. Sights like the picture that accompanies this column were everywhere. Mother Nature was wearing her good jewelry.

No cars went by the house at all on Sunday. It was like we had stepped back in time about 70 years. I half-expected to see the Heiller family hike up from the valley.

In the early afternoon, I called Eldor Wunnecka to see if a sander was coming. The township truck had tipped over, he informed me. When a sanding truck tips over, you know it’s slippery.

Malika paced the floor as the day progressed. The timing of the storm wasn’t perfect for everyone. I would have felt the same way if it had hit a day later when we were putting the newspaper to bed.

But it could have been worse, Mom reminded me during a phone call that day. Power lines had weathered the ice. No one had lost electricity, not a lot of stuff had broken.

Mother Nature was toying with us, in a sense. Testing our patience. Reminding us what real power is.

And to put it in perspective, we need only look to the tragedy of the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean on December 26 to realize what a real force of nature looks like. We had better not complain too loudly about a little ice.

It gave us a chance to worry and wonder, to play music and listen to the Vikings, to work on a jigsaw puzzle and read a book. That’s not a bad consequence to anything.

At 6 p.m. the Brownsville Township sander roared by. I was standing alongside the road by then, because I had heard it coming. My grin must have blinded the driver. I was relieved! Gregory Guillien turned the truck around just south of our house, then pulled over to see who the idiot was by the side of that road.

It was a bad storm, Greg said, second worst he had ever seen. Taking four times the sand to make the roads safe, and the ice was going to be with us all winter. Snow falls on it; it’s going to be slippery. Drivers of sanding trucks know those kinds of things.

I gave him a heartfelt thank you. The road was open. We were back in touch with civilization. At least until next time, which can wait a year or two.

Some cold weather thoughts ~ January 20, 1993

David Heiller 

Cold is relative. It always takes a cold snap to remind me of that. In December of 1977, we had a stretch of very cold weather, 20 and 30 below for a week or so. I remember standing outside and playing my banjo when the temperature rose to zero.

This past Sunday morning was like that. I shoveled snow in my bathrobe and slippers, after the temperature shot up to 17 below zero. That was the warmest it had been for a day and a half.

On Saturday afternoon, the thermometer rose to 21 below.

Cold~cold~cold

That was the high for the day. The night before we had minus 33.

Steve Popowitz went outside Saturday morning. He thought some people were chopping down trees in his woods. Then he realized that the trees were popping from the cold. Pop. Crack. Pop. Crack. It sounded just like someone chopping trees with an axe. It was louder and faster than he’d ever heard.

He had 35 below. He was trying not to boast when he said it. But it feels good anytime you can beat a friend in the How-Cold-Was-It contest.

There’s always someone who had it colder too. “Ed Pepin had 38 below, so we had at least 40,” Pat Helfman told me on Sunday. She’s telling the truth, as any fifth grade student can tell you.

Sure as shooting, someone is reading this column right now and saying, “Well I had it colder than that. Forty below? That’s nothing. Hey Lena, listen to what this idiot Heiller wrote this week.”

People love cold weather. It makes us feel like we’ve earned the right to be called Minnesotans.

Cold~cold days are good puzzle days...

We don’t brag about it, but it feels good to casually mention it. It’s the same feeling a fisherman gets when he’s carrying an eight pound lake trout, and he meets another fisherman. “Catch anything,” the one will ask. “Nothing much,” the other says, holding up his fish and trying not to smile.

Some people really earn their cold weather wings. I saw Pat Mee filling up Jean Lunde’s fuel oil tank on Friday afternoon. He was standing with his back to a vicious north wind. The wind chill was 50-below, which he acknowledged by turning up the collar on his coveralls. You know it’s cold when Pat turns up his collar.

Somehow, seeing Pat there gave me a secure feeling. He has an important job to do, and he does it, and you know he will do it. When was the last time you heard of someone running out of fuel because a Pat Mee or a Don Petersen couldn’t stand the cold? I can’t recall one.

...and a good time for a game of Monopoly with a friend.

School bus drivers earn it too. We trust them with our kids in the dark, frozen mornings, and they never let us down.

In fact, once people get accustomed to cold weather, life goes on almost as usual. Maybe they play a few more games of cribbage or Yahtzee. But people are still out snowmobiling and ice fishing. Kids still go sliding and skating.

I took an hour’s hike through the woods on snowshoes on Saturday afternoon. It was 21 below, but the sun was shining and there was no wind, and it was lovely. The woods were beautiful, pure and pristine. The snow was soft and powdery. Hardly any tracks on it.

I heard a chickadee call its spring song too. Phee-bee. Phee-bee. They must know something that we don’t.

Or else they are eternal optimists, like Steve Popowitz. He was going to split wood on Saturday afternoon. He had some big, tough hunks. They would split easier in the cold weather, he said.

Steve was verifying that old saying, that wood heats you six times: when you cut it, haul it, split it, stack it, carry it in, and burn it.

“Anything colder than 20 below feels the same anyway,” Steve said. Cold weather brings out the philosopher in Steve. (So do a lot of other subjects.)

I thought about that statement later, when I came in from the woods. My beard was white with ice. My toes were numb. As I warmed up I got a headache like you get when you eat an ice cream cone too fast. I don’t think I could have hiked like that at 30 below or 40 below.

It’s something to think about anyway. Cold weather is good for that.

Doing battle with gloves and mittens ~ January 12, 1989

David Heiller

Mitten Wars Have Arrived, the tabloid headline screams. Mittens Fighting to Conquer Civilization as We Know It.

Meanwhile, back in Pine County, Minnesota...

Last Friday, as we headed out the door for the day care and Noah put on his mittens, I noticed that one was red, the other blue.

Mittens and winter and, hey, hers even match!

“You can’t wear those,” I said. “They don’t match.” There’s no surer sign of failed parenthood than when children don’t have mittens that match.

“Where are all your mittens?” I continued, looking through the shoe rack in the play room where we keep the mittens. Don’t ask why we keep mittens in a shoe rack.

“I don’t know. Maybe at day care,” Noah answered. “Maybe at Jake’s, I think.”

Noah’s friend, Jake, has a laundry basket full of hats and mittens. It’s a fine and colorful collection, and grows every time Noah visits there.

We looked through the toys on the floor of the play room, and found two mittens. They didn’t match the ones on Noah’s hands. We finally went to day care with mismatched mittens, something no self-respecting parent should allow.

This grated on me for the next 24 hours. Finally, on Saturday night, I worked up the courage to get to the bottom of the Mitten Mystery.

First I cleaned the play room, no small task in itself. Beneath the rubble, and in the shoe rack and another old diaper bag, I came up with 21 gloves and mittens which do not have a match.

Α family of four has 21 gloves and mittens with no match? I couldn’t believe it. I even took a picture for proof. (One of the gloves disappeared before I could snap the shutter, which explains why only 20 are pictured.)

My mind reeled. If four people could come up with 21 unmatched mittens, what would a family like the Bennetts of Willow River, or the Loureys of Kerrick, do? We’re talking Guinness Book of World Records here.

So Ι made a few phone calls. First I called Mary Bennett. She and Maurice have 10 children, ranging from Mike, 39, to Joseph, 20.

How did you keep track of their mittens, I asked.

Mrs. Bennett didn’t hesitate over her family secret. Maybe she heard the tremble in my voice “Safety pins were our savior, our salvation,” she answered. “When they took them off, I pinned them together and we hung them to dry, over a chair or something.” She also pinned the mitten to the sleeves of their coats and snowsuits when they were playing.

But she had help. Most of the Bennett mittens were hand-made, either by Mary’s mother, Rose DeRungs, or a kindly neighbor lady, Mary Okronglis. The mittens were distinctive, almost like works of art. That helped keep track of them, Mrs. Bennett said graciously.

“I always had a bunch, five or six, without mates after I sorted,” Mrs. Bennett admitted. “That is something to keep track of the mittens and keep enough dry ones on hand.”

The Mitten Wars aren’t over for Mrs. Bennett. Those 10 children have brought 20 grandchildren, and there’ll be 20 more before the battle ends. That’s OΚ with Mrs. Bennett.

“I still have their mittens in a cardboard box marked ‘Mittens,’ and when the grandchildren come to play, they wear the mittens their moms and dads wore when they were little,” Mrs. Bennett said. That’s a nice thought.

And what about the Lourey clan in Kerrick, Becky and Dal and their 11 kids, from Tim, 25, to Nick, 10?

“Mittens never seemed to drive me crazy,” Becky claimed.

That may be true, but remember, nothing drives Becky crazy, not even Doug Carlson. And Becky handled the challenge of the Mitten Wars the same way she handles her political campaigns. She invented a Mitten Rack. Oliver Wilson, an old Moose Lake welder, transferred the idea to steel. He used heavy pieces of metal, about three feet long, with five-inch hooks welded up and away from this base, about an inch and a half apart. These Lourey Mitten Mounts, all nine feet worth and spray painted tractor orange, line the wall by the woodstove in the basement, waiting for soggy gloves and mitts. Another set of racks away from the stove holds the mittens which are dry and ready for use.

In their prime, each Lourey child had about four pairs of mittens, Becky guessed. “You’d end up with so many mittens,” Becky said. “You can imagine. All 11 were at home at the same time. You could end up with 44 pairs of mittens.”

But a new mitten problem has reared its head. Seems that Dal is now missing a really warm pair of mittens. Becky figures one of those kids home from college for the holidays returned to school with α warm pair of mittens?

That’s something to look forward to. I guess the Mitten Wars never end.

Summer, songs, and saunas ~ January 22, 1987

David Heiller

Let the December winds bellow and blow,

I’m as warm as a July tomato,

There’s peaches on the shelf, potatoes in the bin,

Supper’s ready, everybody come on in

And taste a little of the summer,

My grandma put it all in a jar.

Processing summer to put in jars.

I thought of that song by Greg Brown as I carried four jars of tomatoes in from the freezer. Cindy had promised a spaghetti supper if I would get the tomatoes from the garage. I carried the four cold jars through the January wind in my bare hands, and summer seemed very far away.

The smell of tomato sauce filled the house as Cindy added her spices. Along with the basil and oregano, she added a sprinkle of sunshine, the buzz of a bee and shadow of a barn swallow. After a plate of homemade spaghetti, summer doesn’t seem so distant.

After dinner, I lit the wood stove in the sauna for our weekly bath. By 5:30, the temperature had reached 110 degrees. That’s a good temperature for people who don’t live within 10 miles of Finlayson, where they have an ordinance that all saunas must be at least 200 degrees.

Mollie, our 19-month-old daughter, held on tight as Ι wrapped a bath towel around her and jogged the 20 yards to the sauna.

“Gumpya bumpa allushnee yα-goya,” she chattered in the January wind. Translated: “What the heck are you doing, Dad, trying to freeze my you-know-what?”

Once inside the sauna, she loosened her grip and slid to the floor, squealing in naked delight. She climbed into her bathtub on the low bench, knee high off the floor.

Noah and Momma followed us, in a cloud of steam as I swung open the door for him. Noah made his complaints clearer than his sister. “Oh, Daddy, that was so cold, Ι don’t like that so cold, because it blows my hair and it’s cold.”

“But it’s warm in here, right?” Cindy asked, taking off his robe.

Saunas on cold cold days were always more fun for the 
kids when they had a friend along.

“Yes, but I don’t like that cold and wind,” he repeated, as he climbed to the high bench and into his bathtub. Noah is three and a half years old, and he likes to preface hid statements with “Yes—but,” especially when we try to change the subject.

Cindy and I discussed sauna strategy. “Should we wash Mollie’s hair now?” she asked as I washed the kids with a soapy washcloth. “We can wash it now, before she gets too hot and crabby and we have to take her in.”

“Yes, but if we wash it now, she’ll be crabby and want to go in right away,” I said. I’m a pretty good “yes—but” man myself.

So we let the kids splash a little longer. Noah, on the top bench, found α delightful game, pouring water from his bathtub down onto Mollie’s head.

Mollie hates to get her hair washed by Mom and Dad, much less the older brother. She started yelling. Cindy saw a perfect transition.

“Would you like your hair washed?” she asked. Mollie had already started crawling up into Momma’s lap, but that question stopped her in mid-crawl

“Now,” she answered. I repeated the question, hoping that we had misheard her answer.

Hair washing got easier of
 course, as she got a little older.

“Now.” That was “no.”

By this time, Cindy had tightened her grip on the kid, holding her face up on her lap. Ι grabbed the cup from Noah and poured water on Malika’s head. “Ah done,” Mollie said. “Ah done.”

I scrubbed away, while Mollie repeated her wishful I “Ah done” in between cries and yells. “OK, all done,” I said when we finished.

“Ah done,” Mollie got in the last word.

Noah grabbed the cup back from me, and began pouring water on Malika again. Cindy took the cup from him and poured water on his head. Noah yelled, much louder than Mollie. He can’t stand hair washing, either, much less a cup of plain water for no good reason.

“Well, now you know why Malika doesn’t like it,” Cindy said.

“Yes, but I was just pouring it in her tub,” he said. “Boloney,” Cindy answered. Mollie stood up from her tub. “Ah done,” she announced.

“You want to go in the house?”

“Nah,” she answered.

“Are you sure?”

“Nah,” she repeated. That was yes.

I dried her off, then slipped on my robe, and pulled the towel around her. We plunged through the steam into cold wind. Now the temperature seemed like Miami. Malika didn’t complain.

I fell down on the living room carpet. Sunday night exhaustion, after a sauna, on a cold January night on warm living room floor. There’s nothing quite like it, especially when your daughter curls up on your chest.

Ι reached over and turned the radio on. Greg Brown was singing a song that made the night complete.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb-0ZCqga48

Let the December winds bellow and blow

I’m as warm as a July tomato,

There’s peaches on the shelf, potatoes in the bin

Supper’s ready, everybody come on in

Ί And taste a little of the summer,

My Grandma put it all in jars.

So long, Miss Emma ~ January, 1999

David Heiller

Miss Emma seemed to go downhill right before our eyes. For all of her 16 years, she had been a big, healthy cat.

Even in her old age, she was robust. Her stomach fur dragged on the floor. I used to joke that we dusted our furniture by spraying End Dust on her stomach and chasing her around the house.

Miss Emma, doing the cat-gig.

She looked like a healthy old grandma, the kind that wears an apron and makes cookies and reads books to kids sitting on her lap. Emma had a big lap.

Then just like that, about three weeks ago, she looked old and frail. Her bones stuck out. She wouldn’t move or even meow when we walked by her on the dining room floor. She liked to lie in a special spot about two feet from the wood stove.

It’s just old age, I told my wife, Cindy. After all, Emma was 16 years old. That^’s the equivalent of a 76-year-old woman.

Cindy didn’t agree. She felt that something was wrong with Emma, so she took her to our veterinarian, Daina Rosen, in Moose Lake.

Daina did some tests and found out that Emma had a bad heart. Daina couldn’t even count her pulse; her heart was racing so fast. Her kidneys were barely working either.

Miss Emma in the "missing-sock-basket".
She was named Miss Emma because she had Emma-rald eyes.

Daina didn’t say we should put Emma 'to sleep', but it became obvious to us after a few days that that was the best option. We didn’t want our cat to suffer, to not be able to use a cat box or walk around the house, and she was close to that point.

We didn’t want to intervene with intravenous feeding and lots of pills, just to buy her a few months of life. Those were options that Daina presented, in a neutral way. That didn’t make sense. She’s just a cat, one side of me said.

But, what a cat. She was so patient with the kids when they were young. She welcomed them both into our house. When they got too aggres­sive with her, she would give them a little scratch. Nothing serious. Just a warning, and one that they heeded. She was like a mother in that way, which might have been an instinct that she never got to display because she was spayed.

Miss Emma and Malika in the maple tree. 
They were pals like that.

She was a great mouser. One day I woke up to find three mice laid out in front of the wood-stove, like a hunter might display the squirrels he shot. That diminished in her later years. She went into hunting retirement. That didn’t bother us. She had earned it.

She hunted outside too, but we didn’t like that, because we feed birds and it didn’t seem fair to the birds that we were fattening them up for Miss Emma. So we started keeping her inside as she got older, or when a lot of birds were at the feeder.

Emma was very cautious. That’s probably why she lived so long. It would take her a long time to warm up to a new dog in the house. She liked Binti, a dog that we had for 12 years. They were good pals. We tried getting another cat a couple times and Emma refused to have anything to do with them. We finally gave up trying, and gave in to Emma’s desire to be the sole cat.

She liked people too, although she wouldn’t be called the friendliest cat that ever lived. She was too cautious and alert for that. But she would often lay on our bed with us at night, or curl up on our stomach if we were lucky enough to catch a nap. Then it was a real cat nap.

David and Noah and Miss Emma, hanging out.

There isn’t any simpler pleasure in life than having a cat purr next to you. Even though I had bad allergies from Emma, it was worth it to have her with us.

Cindy and I talked about what to do with Emma. We called Daina back and asked a few more questions and told her that we thought we should have her put to sleep. Daina thought that was a good idea. She hadn’t wanted to say that right away. She didn’t want to influence us. But she said there was a lot of wisdom in doing that.

Daina was so gentle. I didn’t realize that vet­erinarians had a bed side manner, but she did. She understood how hard this was. She ex­plained how she would put Emma to sleep by injecting an overdose of anesthesia into her heart using a hypodermic needle. It wouldn’t hurt much, she said. That made me feel good.

We took Emma to Daina’s office on January 14. Emma lay quietly on the table. No way would she have done that when she was healthy. It was like she was resolved to her fate.

Cindy and I knelt by her and petted her when Daina put the needle through her side. Emma didn’t flinch. Her eyes stayed open, but they slowly lost their focus. Then they closed slightly. Daina checked her heart a couple times with a stethoscope, and told us when it had stopped.

We petted Miss Emma for a few minutes. I’m not ashamed to say some tears were shed. It’s hard to lose a pet. I hope I never become too hard-hearted not to feel that. It’s an honor to be present when an old friend dies.

Daina gave us a hug. She said she would keep Emma until spring, when the weather is nice and we can bury her next to Binti, our old dog and her old friend.

Ice fishing can be nice fishing ~ January 9, 1992

David Heiller

Is there a better sight than to see a bobber sink into a hole in the ice on a warm December day during Christmas vacation?

Let me know, because I can’t think of one.

That’s the first thing we saw, me and Noah and his friend, Joe, out on Fox Lake on Dec. 29. I didn’t even have Noah’s hole scooped out, and there went Joe’s bobber, sinking slowly from sight.

“Set the hook and back away from the hole,” I yelled at Joe, who calmly did just that. A nice crappie soon flopped onto the ice.

Joe, fishing in warmer weather.

We all laughed and talked at the same time. We had been fishing all of 15 seconds, and already we had a keeper. We smiled lustful smiles. We thought we’d have our limits in half an hour, the fish were that hungry. You never know what’s under the ice.

That jinxed us. The fish weren’t THAΤ hungry. Over the next two hours, we ended up with a total of 14 keepers. All but one were caught by Noah and Joe. That was fine with me. I spent most of my time putting minnows on hooks and trying to keep my hands warm. Murphy’s Law 27-G states: When you fish with kids, winter or summer, you don’t catch a lot of fish.

You lower your expectations and have fun watching the kids have fun. You don’t catch fish. At least that was my excuse that day.

Ice fishing is not high science. Eight-year-olds can out fish grown men with the right hole and the right hook and the fight depth and the fight luck. Who knows why?

Sometimes you even get a helping hand. An older guy, Leonard Kiminski, walked over to us soon after we had settled in that afternoon. He told us that he and his friend, John Bentz, were just a few fish shy of their crappie limit, which is 15 each.

Noah and Joey playing in the snow 
with Malika and Queen Ida.

“Fish at about nine feet,” he said. We were at about 12 feet, a foot off the bottom, which conventional wisdom says is proper.

Leonard didn’t have to tell us where the fish were hiding. Not all ice fishermen would do that. Quite the contrary. But Leonard did.

Leonard also nonchalantly remarked that he had caught a nice-sized crappie too. “Come over and take a look,” he said.

The boys were over there in a matter of seconds, and they came running back for me. It was indeed a beauty, about 14 inches long, weighing well over a pound, I guessed.

“And it was the first one we caught today,” Bentz said, with a lustful gleam in his eye that looked pretty familiar.

Not all ice fishing trips are as nice as that one was. Sometimes you stand in the sleet with a raw wind blowing up your shirt. Sometimes the guys next to you only offer four letter words instead of advice. Sometimes you get skunked and cold and wonder why you even bothered.

But even on days like that, you breathe some fresh air and get some exercise and feel a bit better for getting your carcass off the couch for a spell. Who cares who won that football game?

And you never know what’s under the ice.

Oh, the joy of getting sick ~ January 10, 1991

David Heiller

There’s nothing like being sick to give you a healthy perspective on life. Everywhere you go these days, you find people with colds, flu, upset stomachs, fevers, shaking, aching, coughing, blowing noses that would make Rudolph jealous, they’re so red.

But if you’re like me, you don’t really FEEL for these folks right away. You look at them and say to yourself, “Αw, come on, it can’t be THAT bad.” You know they’re sick, but you think in a righteous tone, “I never get that sick.”

Napping David with Rosie, 2006. He wasn't the most sympathetic guy when others were sick. "Go for a walk, you'll feel better," was his stock line. 
Sometimes he got a taste of it though!

Then one morning your ears start to ring, and your stomach turns inside out, and soon your head feels like a hammer-mill and your tongue feels like a doormat for the Iraqi Army and your chest starts to wheeze like Florian Chmielewski’s accordion.

Then suddenly you understand, because you feel just like those so-called fakers, and on top of your aches and pains, you can add a touch of guilt for doubting them in the first place.

It started at work, first with Sandi, then Arla, then Ardis and Cindy, all with the same flu bug, causing all those symptoms, causing them to walk around on eggshells and stare blankly for a split second when you ask them a question, then groaning an answer.

Only Hazel and I withstood the bug at work. Hazel, age 69, could thank her clean-living life-style and pure Danish bloodlines. And me, a robust 37-year-old male in the prime of life, well, “I never get sick,” I thought, in that same righteous tone.

Then last week, it hit me. First in the lungs, then the head, then the stomach. It hit hard. I lost my appetite, dropped five pounds in a day. I stayed home from work, slept two hours in the afternoon. Normal tasks looked mountainous. Dishes stacked up on the counter, left entirely for Cindy. Carrying in wood took my breath away. The outhouse seemed miles away. I couldn’t even read bedtime stories to the kids.

Arla called from work on Friday afternoon, at the peak of this misery, and we groaned at each other. She said she was going home to bed, and I said “Good,” and for once I understood how she felt, because I felt the same way. It’s amazing what a little illness will do fοr your empathy.

It’s funny too, that just when you think you’ll never start feeling better, you notice you are feeling better. It doesn’t happen with the snap of a finger. First it’s the head, not pounding so hard. You, don’t feel dizzy when you rise from the chair. Loud noises don’t hurt your ears as much. You even put away the plastic bucket that has stayed by your side for the past day. You eat supper with the rest of the family, and eye that bottle of beer in the fridge with a renewed look, and even think about making some popcorn before you go to bed.

And you learn the kindness and beneficence of St. Francis of Assisi. When your five-year-old daughter comes into your bedroom and tickles your feet as you try to nap—Tickle-Tickle-Tickle—you refrain from tossing her into a snow bank. When you see the house in chaos, you start the vacuum cleaner, and sweep the floor, and wash the dishes.

And when the sun rises to an incredible 15 degrees ABOVE zero, you strap the skis on the kids and yourself, and take a jaunt into the woods, and breathe in a few deep breaths, and wonder how you could ever have slept through all this warmth and sunshine and beauty.

Yup, there’s nothing like being sick to give you a new outlook on a healthy life.